"Cyberinfrastructure is now so important in science and engineering research and education that the director decided it should be more visible within the agency," said Crawford. "All of the disciplines that the NSF supports now have shared ownership of the cyberinfrastructure endeavor."

The role of the OCI is to coordinate and support the acquisition, development and deployment of cyberinfrastructure resources, tools and services. High-performance computers, storage, data repositories and management, networking, software and middleware are some of the areas that the new office covers. Crawford expects that the OCI will grow in size as its range of responsibilities increases over the next few years.

"New programmatic approaches for cyberinfrastructure have been discussed in the past week at the National Science Board Meeting," said Crawford. "Planning and implementation activities focused on enhancing high-performance computing capabilities will start within the month."

The Cyberinfrastructure Council, which will consider overall policies and strategic direction for cyberinfrastructure in NSF, includes the director and deputy director of the NSF and the heads of the NSF directorates and offices. The CIC will likely not review each individual proposal submitted to the OCI. Large awards of several million dollars over several years may be reviewed by the CIC and the National Science Board, as is currently standard practice for all large NSF awards.

"The first main job of the CIC will be to develop a strategic cyberinfrastructure plan that will guide NSF investments for the next five years," said Crawford. "OCI is responsible for facilitating this process. We hope to post the first draft of the document for public comment within the month."

The NSF is now conducting a search for a permanent OCI director. The vacancy announcement can be viewed here.

Learn more about the OCI at the NSF Web site.